I spend a lot of time reading weblogs, and for the ones that I follow closely I really enjoy when they post. And I should try to remember that there’s probably people out there who like reading my own weblog, and I should make more of an effort to post occaisionally!

(inspired by Ant’s return to the blogosphere)

The whiteboard at Baron’s Court tube is the best whiteboard I’ve found on the Underground. Which is a weird thing to say, but bear with me.

I’ve noticed over the last year that I’ve been working at Charing Cross Hospital, and hence using the station, that there is someone there who takes their customer services seriously - and use the whiteboard to express themselves. There’s often a “thought of the day” for people to peruse, but today was much better - a list of common oyster card error codes, with what they mean. And importantly, it was phrased as what it means for the customer, not the system - so 94 meain “Step back and try again” instead of Card Communications Failed, or “The person in front got through on your card” rather than “Double entry attempted”. Like I say, it’s little things like this which show the customer service focus. I wonder who it is that writes all these things (and whether they ever get hassle from management for showing creativity!)

I went to the first bbq of the year, at Jude’s flat, last night. It’s not really warm enough for that kind of shenanigans - it got quite cold quite quickly after sunset - but it’s a good excuse for a big get together. I took some drunken photos (more of which later), so now I’ve reached the 4,500 photos mark. Some more theatre productions would be nice to get the count up higher - and give me a chance to make more use of my new lenses.

The Thames Path walk continued yesterday as well - I’ve now got to Hampton Court. Hopefully by the end of the Easter hols next week I’ll have made it upstream as far as the M25 (after that it gets a bit harder to organise!)

Thursday night was another gig - the Secret Machines (no, me either) at Shephards Bush Empire. I thought it was brilliant - nice chilled out alt rock (as far as I’m concerned, but I have no idea about music genres) - but apparently it was disappointingly different from their normal stuff. Still, it suited me.

The Tuesday night badminton is fast becoming a regular thing - which suits me fine, since it keeps me out of the pub a bit longer. I manage to hold my own at it despite not having played for so long, and I’m quite amazed at how many times I manage to successfully hit the shuttlecock! And there’s something deeply satifying about a baseline diving back-hand ground sweep that clears the net by two inches and hits the ground six inches over (w00t!). Let’s not bruise my ego by asking me to make the shot a second time…